





/ 





SELECTIONS 


FROM THE 


Writings of John J. Ingalls 










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Memoir. 


“ Dearest Wife: 

“ ‘Blue Grass’ seems to be one of those 
compositions that the world will not willing- 
ly let die. 

“Those were happy days when it was 
written: in the little cottage on the bluff 
looking out over the great river ; with a 
roomful of babies; obscure and unknown; 
waiting for destiny, so soon to come. * 

* * How far away it seems! 

******** 

“Your Loving Husband.” 

“My bereavement,” he writes to his sis- 
ter after the death of little Ruth, aged 
seven, “seems to me like a cruel dream 
from which I shall soon awaken. The light 
has gone out of my life. Ruth was my 
favorite child. Her temperament was tran- 
quil and consoling; she gratified my love 
of the beautiful, my desire for repose. I 


6 


Selections from the 


loved her most because she was so much 
like her dear mother.” And he adds at the 
close: ‘‘I am assured we shall meet again. ’ 
******** 

‘‘It is a most entrancing morning. I 
have just come in from a stroll in the sun- 
shine to and fro along the stone walk to the 
north gate. The sky is cloudless, and the 
wind just strong enough to turn the mill 
slowly in the soft air. The smoke from the 
chimneys rises straight to the zenith and 
dissolves in the stainless blue. In the deep, 
distant valley the river glimmers through a 
dim silver mist woven with shifting purple 
like the hues which gleam on the breast of 
a dove. Undulating along the horizon, 
the bluffs rise like translucent crags of vio- 
let, and from the city beneath columns of 
vapor and fumes from engines and factories 
ascend, accompanied by a confused and in- 
articulate murmur, like the whispers of pro- 
test and pain. * * * 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 


7 


Albert Dean Richardson. 

* * * He is one of the finest 

modern illustrations of the day-laborer in 
literature. He was a true journeyman. 
Letters were to him abrade. He wrote be- 
cause he could, and not because he must. 
He carefully ascertained what the people 
were interested to know ; then learned all 
he could upon the subjects, and told it in 
the most interesting manner at his com- 
mand. He judged the value of his books 
by jhe number of copies sold, and pursued 
literature because it was a profitable voca- 
tion. He believed that mind was a certain 
force that could be successfully exerted in 
any direction its proprietor desired. In an 
eminent degree he possessed the New Eng- 
land qualities of thrift, shrewdness, fore- 
sight, and calculation. 

Kansas exercised the same fascination 
over him that she does over all who have 
ever yielded to her spell. There are some 


8 


Selections from the 


women whom to have once loved renders 
it impossible ever to love again. As the 
“gray and melancholy main” to the sailor, 
the desert to the Bedouin, the Alps to the 
mountaineer, so is Kansas to all her chil- 
dren. 

No one ever felt any enthusiasm about 
Wisconsin, or Indiana, or Michigan. The 
idea is preposterous. It is impossible. 
They are great, prosperous communities, 
but their inhabitants can remove and never 
desire to return. They hunger for the 
horizon. They make new homes without 
the maladie du paps. But no genuine Kan- 
san can emigrate. He may wander. He 
may roam. He may travel. He may go 
elsewhere, but no other State can claim 
him as a citizen. Once naturalized, the 
allegiance can never be forsworn. 


Writings of John ]. Ingalls. 


9 


John Brown’s Place in History. 

* * * Thenceforward there was 

no divergence in his career. He was not 
distracted by ambition, nor wealth, nor 
ease, nor fame. He never hesitated. De- 
lay did not baffle nor disconcert him, nor 
discomfiture render him despondent. His 
tenacity of purpose was inexorable. Those 
relations, possessions, and pursuits which to 
most men are the chief objects of existence 
— home, friends, fortune, estate, power — to 
him were the most insignificant incidents. 
He regarded them as trivial, unimportant, 
and wholly subsidiary to the accomplish- 
ment of the great mission for which he had 
been sent upon earth. His love of justice 
was an irresistible passion, and slavery the 
accident that summoned all his powers in- 
to dauntless and strenuous activity. 

His subsequent career belongs to the 


10 


Selections from the 


history of the Nation. Out of the porten- 
tous and menacing cloud of anti-slavery 
sentiment that had long brooded with sullen 
discontent, a baleful meteor above the 
North, he sprang like a terrific thunderbolt, 
whose lurid glare illuminated the continent 
with its devastating flame, and whose rever- 
berations among the splintered crags of 
Harper’s Ferry were repeated on a thou- 
sand battle-fields from Gettysburg to the 
Gulf. From the instant that shot was fired 
the discussion and debate of centuries was 
at an end. He who was not for slavery 
was against it. The North became verte- 
brated and the age of cartilage and com- 
promise was at an end. The Nation seized 
the standard of universal emancipation 
which dropped from his dying hand on 
the scaffold at Charlestown, and bore it in 
triumph to Appomattox. 

What immortal and dauntless courage 
breathes in this procession of stately 


sen- 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 11 

tences; what fortitude; what patience; what 
faith; what radiant and eternal hope! No 
pagan philosopher, no Hebrew prophet, no 
Christian martyr, ever spoke in loftier and 
more heroic strains than this “coward and 
murderer,’’ who declared from the near 
brink of an ignominious grave that there 
was no acquisition so splendid as moral 
purity; no inheritance so desirable as per- 
sonal liberty; nothing on this earth nor in 
the world to come so valuable as the soul, 
whatever the hue of its habitation; no im- 
pulse so noble as an unconquerable purpose 
to love truth, and an invincible determina- 
tion to obey God. 

* * * Scholars, orators, poets, 

philanthropists play their parts, but the cri- 
sis comes at last through someone who is 
stigmatized as a fanatic by his contempo- 
raries, and whom the supporters of the sys- 
tems he assails crucify between thieves or 
gibbet as a felon. * * * * 

Already the great intellectual leaders 


12 


Selections from the 


of the movement for the abolition of slavery 
are dead. The student of the future will 
exhume their orations, arguments, and state 
papers as a part of the subterranean history 
of the epoch. The antiquarian will dig up 
their remains from the alluvial drift of the 
period, and construe their relations to the 
great events in which they were actors; but 
the three men of this era who will loom 
forever against the remotest horizon of time, 
as the Pyramids above the voiceless deserts, 
or mountain peaks over the subordinate 
plains, are Abraham Lincoln. Ulysses S. 
Grant, and Old John Brown of Osa- 
watomie. 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 13 


Eulogy on the Death of Senator 
Henry B. Anthony, of 
Rhode Island. 

The entire career of Senator Anthony 
was one of unique and singular felicity. 
For him fate spared its irony. Nemesis 
was propitiated. Fortune favored him. 
Time denied him none of those possessions 
that are regarded as the chief requisites of 
human happiness. He escaped calumny, 
and detraction passed him by. There was 
no winter in his years. He had length of 
days without infirmity. His ambition was 
satisfied. Honor, health, love, friendship, 
affluence, which so often with capricious 
disdain elude the most strenuous pursuit, 
attended him as courtiers surround a mon- 
arch. His life was not fragmentary and 
unfinished, but full - orbed and complete. 
Death was not an interruption, but a cli- 
max. His sun was neither obscured nor 
eclipsed, but followed its appointed path 


14 


Selections from the 


to the western horizon. So he departed, 
and above his spirit and fame abides the 
enduring covenant of peace: 

“His memory, like a cloudless sky; 

His conscience, like a sea at rest.” 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 


15 


Happiness. 

* * * There is a quality in the 

soul of man that is superior to circumstances 
and that defies calamity and misfortune. 
The man who is unhappy when he is poor 
would be unhappy if he were rich, and he 
who is happy in a palace in Paris would 
be happy in a dug-out on the frontier of 
Dakota. There are as many unhappy rich 
men as there are unhappy poor men. Ev- 
ery heart knows its own bitterness and its 
own joy. Not that wealth and what it 
brings is not desirable — books, travel, lei- 
sure, comfort, the best food and raiment, 
agreeable companionship — but all these do 
not necessarily bring happiness and may co- 
exist with the deepest wretchedness, while 
adversity and perjury, exile and privation 
are not incompatible with the loftiest exal- 
tation of the soul. 


i 


16 


Selections from the 


My Spring Residence. 

Strew me a couch knee-deep with flowers 
and grass, 

With cool and oozy mosses for my head, 
And curtain it with vines whose buds are 
stars, 

With trailing arbute and primroses red 
Just bursting • into bloom. 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 17 


Blue Grass. 

* * * Lying in the sunshine 

among the buttercups and dandelions of 
May, scarcely higher in intelligence than 
the minute tenants of that mimic wilder- 
ness, our earliest recollections are of grass; 
and when the fitful fever is ended, and the 
foolish wrangle of the market and forum 
is closed, grass heals over the scar which 
our descent into the bosom of the earth 
has made, and the carpet of the infant be- 
comes the blanket of the dead. 

******** 

Grass is the forgiveness of Nature — 
her constant benediction. Fields trampled 
with battle, saturated with blood, torn with 
the ruts of cannon, grow green again with 
grass, and carnage is forgotten. Streets 
abandoned by traffic become grass-grown 
like rural lanes, and are obliterated. Forests 
decay, harvests perish, flowers vanish, but 
grass is immortal. Beleaguered by the 


18 


Selections from the 


sullen hosts of winter, it withdraws into 
the impregnable fortress of its subterranean 
vitality, and emerges upon the first solici- 
tation of spring. Sown by the winds, by 
wandering birds, propagated by the subtle 
horticulture of the elements which are its 
ministers and servants, it softens the rude 
outline of the world. * * * * * * 

Unobtrusive and patient, it has immortal 
vigor and aggression. Banished from the 
thoroughfare and the field, it abides its time 
to return, and when vigilance is relaxed, or 
the dynasty has perished, it silently resumes 
the throne from which it has been expelled, 
but which it never abdicates. It bears no 
blazonry of bloom to charm the senses with 
fragrance or splendor, but its homely hue 
is more enchanting than the lily or the rose. 
It yields no fruit in earth or air, and yet 
should its harvest fail for a single year, 
famine would depopulate the world. 

* * Man cannot become learned, 

refined, and tolerant while every energy of 


W ritings of John J. Ingalls. 


19 


body and soul is consumed in the task of 
wresting a bare sustenance from a penuri- 
ous soil; neither can woman become elegant 
and accomplished when every hour of ev- 
ery day in every year is spent over the wash- 
tub and the frying-pan. There must be 
leisure, competence, and repose, and these 
can only be attained where the results of 
labor are abundant and secure. 

******** 

The salutary panacea is Blue Grass. 

This is the healing catholicon, the 
strengthening plaster, the verdant cataplasm, 
efficient alike in the Materia Medica of 
Nature and of morals. 

* * * * Some, too poor or 

too timid to emigrate, would remain behind, 
contenting themselves with a sullen revolt 
against the census, the alphabet, the mul- 
tiplication table, and the penitentiary. 
Dwelling upon the memory of past felonies, 
which the hangman prevents them from 


20 


Selections from the 


repeating, they clasp hands across the 
bloody chasm. 

* * * * Days without clouds 

and nights without dew; days when the 
effulgent sun floods the dome with fierce 
and blinding radiance ; days of glittering 
leaves and burnished blades of serried 
ranks of corn; days when the transparent 
air, purged of all earthly exhalation and 
alloy, seems like a pure powerful lens, re- 
vealing a remoter horizon and a profounder 
sky. 

A huge bulk of purple and ebony vapor, 
preceded by a surging wave of pallid smoke, 
blots out the sky. Birds and insects dis- 
appear, and cattle abruptly stand agazed. 
An appalling silence, an ominous darkness, 
fill the atmosphere. A continuous roll of 
muffled thunder, increasing in volume, shakes 
the solid earth. The air suddenly grows 
chill and smells like an unused cellar. A 
fume of yellow dust conceals the base of 


Writings of John ]. Ingalls. 


21 


the meteor. The jagged scimitar of the 
lightning, drawn from its cloudy scabbard, 
is brandished for a terrible instant in the 
abyss, and thrust into the affrighted city, 
with a crash as if the rafters of the world 
had fallen. The wind, hitherto concealed, 
leaps from its ambush and lashes the earth 
with scourges of rain. The broken cisterns 
of the clouds can hold no water, and rivers 
run in the atmosphere. Dry ravines become 
turbid torrents, bearing cargoes of drift and 
rubbish on their swift descent. Confusion 
and chaos hold undisputed sway. In a 
moment the turmoil ceases. A gray veil of 
rain stands like a wall of granite in the 
eastern sky. The trailing banners of the 
storm hang from the frail bastions. The 
routed squadrons of mist, gray on violet, 
terrified fugitives, precipitately fly beneath 
the triumphal arch of a rainbow whose airy 
and insubstantial glory dies with the dy- 


ing sun. 


22 


Selections from the 


* * * * Heirs of the great- 

est results of time, we are emancipated from 
all allegiance to the past. Unencumbered 
by precedents, we stand in the vestibule of 
a future which is destined to disclose upon 
this arena time’s noblest offspring — the per- 
fected flower of American manhood. 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 23 


Catfish Aristocracy. 

* * * Snoring the night away 

in drunken slumber under a heap of gray 
blankets, he crawls into his muddy jeans 
at sun-up, takes a gurgling drink from a flat 
black bottle stoppered with a cob, goes to 
the log-pile by the front door, and with a 
dull ax slabs off an armful of green cotton- 
wood to make a fire for breakfast, which 
consists of the inevitable “meat and bread ’ 
and a decoction of coffee burned to char- 
coal and drank without milk or sugar. 

* * * * The liberal climate 
and generous soil had nurtured a luxuriant 
vegetation, pastured by untamed herds, that 
were pursued by men more savage than the 
beasts they slew. These were her only her- 
itage, except the traditions of religion, ed- 
ucation, and freedom that animated the 
hearts of her pioneers. The useless mag- 
nificence of the prairie was unvexed by a 
furrow. Spring knew no seedtime, autumn 


24 


Selections from the 


no harvest, save of the wild store that Na- 
ture garners for beast and bird. 

* * * Kansas is the child of 

Plymouth Rock. It was once fashionable 
to sneer at this historic boulder, but it is the 
most impressive spot on the face of the 
earth, save the summit of Calvary. The 
Puritan idea rules the world. Like Aaron’s 
rod, when it appears it swallows up all 
others. * * * It has an uncon- 

querable vitality. Wheresoever it is planted 
it becomes a majority. A little ot its 
leaven leavens the whole lump. Assailed, 
it grows strong; wounded, it revives; buried, 
it becomes the angel of its own resurrection. 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 25 


Regis Loisel. 

The sullen gray bars of the river were 
vocal with sonorous flocks of brant, halt- 
ing for a night on their prodigious emigra- 
tions from the icebergs to the palms. Tri- 
angles of wild geese harrowed the blue 
fields of the sky. Regiments of pelicans 
performed their mysterious evolutions high 
in air — now white, now black, as their 
wings or their breasts were turned to the 
setting sun. The sandhill crane, trailing 
the ridiculous longitude of his thin stilts be- 
hind him, dropped his gurgling croak from 
aerial elevations, at which his outspread 
pinions seemed but a black mote in the 
ocean of the atmosphere. In all the cir- 
cumference of the waste wilderness beneath 
him, he saw no tower or roof or spire upon 
the hills of Atchison, no cabin on the 
prairie, no hollow square cleared in the 
forests of Buchanan and Platte; heard no 
vibrations of bells, no scream of glittering 


26 


Selections from the 


engine, no thunder of rolling trains, no roar 
of wheels, no noise of masses of men like 
distant surf tumbling on a rocky shore; no 
human trace along the curves of the wind- 
ing river, save the thin blue fume that 
curled upward through the trees at the base 
of the bluff from the camp-fire of Regis 
Loisel. 

******** 

And thus at last, in the strange vicis- 
situde and mutation that accompanies hu- 
man affairs, it chanced that the protracted 
strife finally closed in the courts of Nema- 
ha, and it was there determined who were 
the “heirs of Regis Loisel.’’ 

Had the bandage been removed from 
the eyes of the Goddess of Justice upon 
that wintry day, she would have dropped 
the idle scales and brandished the avenging 
sword. ‘ They have built her a stately tem- 
ple since, whose harmonious and symmet- 
rical mass is the poem of a landscape that 
was enchanted before a cheap railway had 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 27 

spanned the Nemaha with its skeleton 
truss, and dumped its black grade diag- 
onally across the great military road that 
trailed westward through the village and 
over the level prairie toward Salt Lake and 
the Pacific Ocean. But upon the day 
aforesaid, the goddess dwelt like the apos- 
tle in her own hired house, a chosen sanc- 
tuary of cottonwood that stoo.d tour-square 
to all the winds that blew. Here were the 
aegis, the palladium, the forum, the ermine, 
the immortal twelve, and all the parapher- 
nalia inseparable from the administration of 
law even in its most primitive form — essen- 
tial to its sanctions, the staple of its orators; 
without which, we are assured by its min- 
isters, the proud edifice of our liberties 
would incontinently topple and fall head- 
long from turret to foundation-stone. 


28 


Selections from the 


The Last of the Jayhawkers. 

* * With what awe in our boy- 

hood do we contemplate the majestic name 
of Washington! That benign and tranquil 
although somewhat stolid visage looks down 
upon us from a serene atmosphere unstained 
with earthly passion. That venerable fame 
bears no taint of mortal frailty save in the 
juvenile episode of the hatchet, in which the 
venial error is expiated by the immortal 
candor of its confession. To our revering 
fancy, the massive form wrapped in military 
cloak stands forever at midnight upon the 
frozen banks of the Delaware, watching 
the patriot troops cross the icy current in 
the darkness before the grand morning of 
Trenton; or else, arrayed in black velvet 
small-clothes, resigning his commission to 
the Continental Congress at Annapolis. We 
learn in riper years, with grief not unmin- 
gled with incredulity, that this great man 
was subject to ungovernable outbreaks of 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 29 


rage, that he swore like a mule-driver, and 
that he was not only the Father of his 
Country, but also of Governor Posey of 
Indiana. 

******** 
“One hero less on earth, 

One angel more in heaven!” 

The unreliable character of grave-stone 
literature has been the theme of frequent 
comment, but unless this ostensible eulogy 
was intended as a petrified piece of jocu- 
larity and gratuitously inscribed by the 
sculptor, it may, perhaps, be justly consid- 
ered the most liberal application of the 
maxim, “Nil de mortuis nisi bonum ,” to ba 
found in any American cemetery. 


30 


Selections from the 


The “Good-Fellow Girl.’’ 

Universities, colleges, libraries, and mu- 
seums are endowed by contributions to the 
conscience fund from the death-bed repent- 
ance of contrite pirates and extortioners 
who, having burned the candle to Mam- 
mon all their lives, blow the snuff in the 
face of the Lord. This is morally the most 
corrupt and greedy age since Nero played 
first violin at the burning of Rome. 

******** 

Such is the extreme nineteenth-century 
protest against Puritanism. The home is 
the unit of the state, and the social law 
hitherto has been that woman’s proper place 
is home — not as a slave or a drudge, but 
as a companion, colleague, and spiritual 
guardian; walking a path not of roses, but 
of love, faith, and duty, and supreme in 
that kingdom. The properly reared and 
educated young woman anticipates marriage 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 31 


and maternity as her natural destiny. The 
race-track, midnight revelries, high kicking, 
skirt-dancing, and “coon” songs are not fa- 
vorable preliminaries. 


32 


Selections from the 


A Nation’s Genesis. 

Those sombre exiles brought in their 
cargo many things that did not appear in 
the invoice. They unloaded from their 
shallop the elements of a civilization the 
most rapacious, the most arrogant, the most 
relentless ever known in the history of man- 
kind. Those who signed their names to the 
compact of government in that dingy cabin 
released social and political ideas of incon- 
ceivable energy, self-government, liberty of 
conscience, universal education. The same 
spirit that penned that charter wrote the 
Declaration of Independence, the Consti- 
tution, the Proclamation of Emancipation, 
guided the pen of Lincoln, unsheathed the 
sword of Grant, trained the guns of Dewey 
at Manila, and created the splendor and 
opulence and power of the civilization of 
the nineteenth century. 

Anniversaries are the exclamation points 


W ritings of John ]. Ingalls. 33 


of history. The mind takes mysterious 
pleasure in their return. The birthday of 
a hero recalls him from the tomb and he 
lives again in the souls of millions who re- 
hearse his triumphs and deplore his death. 
******** 

It is far within bounds to say that hu- 
manity has made greater progress in the 
last hundred years than in all the six thou- 
sand that preceded. 

In everything that makes life rich and 
valuable and worth living for, health, com- 
fort, beauty and happiness, the humblest 
artisan enjoys what kings could not purchase 
with their treasures a century ago. 

******** 

A. D. 2000 seems remote, but the 
interval will pass like a vision in the night 
when one awaketh. He who shall tell its 
story to the eager, listening multitudes that 
distant morning may possibly assure them 
that the encroachments of capital have been 
restrained and that labor has its just re- 


34 


Selections from the 


ward; that the rich are no longer afflicted 
with satiety nor the poor with discontent; 
that we have wealth without ostentation, 
liberty without license, taxation without op- 
pression, the broadest education, and the 
least corruption of manners. Perhaps not. 
He can hardly record any great additional 
victories over Nature, unless it be aerial 
navigation. We have conquered the earth 
and the sea. Some twentieth century Edi- 
son may conquer the atmosphere. 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 


35 


A Dream of Empire. 

There was no railroad nor telegraph; 
no telephone, no typewriter nor sewing- 
machine; no chloroform nor photography. 
Every acre of grain was sowed broadcast; 
reaped with the sickle . and the cradle, 
and threshed with the “dull thunder of the 
alternate flail.” Friction matches were un- 
known. Fire, the indispensable agent of 
civilization, was started by striking sparks 
from flint and steel into tinder, and pre- 
served by covering coals in the ashes at 
night. Kings, with their treasuries, could 
not obtain the comforts and conveniences 
in their palaces which the most parsimonious 
landlord now furnishes without question for 
the unpretentious cottage of the blacksmith 
and the carpenter. 

# * « * * * # * 
Individual liberty, the practice of self- 
government, equality of rights before equal 
laws, and equal opportunities in the struggle 


36 


Selections from the 


for existence have been the potential agen- 
cies that have abolished the frontier and 
subjugated the desert. 

The race that has wrought this trans- 
formation, conscious of a destiny not yet 
accomplished, pauses for an instant upon 
the shores of the Pacific, before entering 
upon its final career for the moral and ma- 
terial conquest of the world. 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 


37 


Hallucinations of Despair. 

The praises of poverty have been pro- 
nounced by the rich. Seneca wrote the 
eulogy of poverty on a table of gold, but 
nobody wants to be poor. Some philoso- 
pher has said that the way to have what 
you want is to want what you have; and 
another, that it is better not to wish for a 
thing than to have it; but money still re- 
mains the universal object of chief desire. 
The reason is obvious. For the individual, 
money means education, travel, books, lei- 
sure, superiority to the accidents of life, 
comely apparel, in health the best cook, in 
sickness the most skillful physician, the hap- 
piness of those beloved, the luxury of doing 
good. For society it means libraries, mu- 
seums, parks, galleries of art, hospitals, uni- 
versities, comfort for the unfortunate, splen- 
dor for the rich, everything that distin- 
guishes civilization from barbarism. 


38 Selections from the 

All questions in our system, except 
those of theology, are political, and come 
at last to the ballot-box for decision. It is 
a government of numbers, and the majority 
have less than twelve hundred dollars apiece. 
As things are going on now, the time is not 
far off when the man with a hundred mill- 
ions may be required to show his title, and 
if there is any flaw, to make restitution. 


W ritings of John J. Ingalls. 


39 


Socialism Is Impossible. 

* * * * * Government is 
worst served than any other employer of 
labor on earth. It pays higher wages for 
less service, and the waste and idleness are 
incredible. 

******** 
America has been the paradise and the 
nineteenth century the golden age of indi- 
vidualism. At no other place or time has 
the world offered richer prizes or freer field 
to capacity, courage and intelligence. There 
have been errors and evils. Perfection is 
still remote, but there has been greater 
progress in science, in popular education, 
in the means of livelihood, in sanitation, in 
the means of communication, in the conquest 
over the mysteries of the universe, than in 
all the centuries that preceded. We have 
become the richest and most powerful na- 
tion because every man has been left free 
to be master of himself, to improve his con- 


40 


Selections from the 


dition, to obtain superior reward for supe- 
rior merit. 

* * * * Colleges, universi- 

ties, technical schools, offer free instruction 
to the humblest. Parks, galleries, and mu- 
seums afford the means of recreation to the 
poorest. Hospitals for the sick, retreats 
for the infirm, asylums for the unfortunate, 
exemplify the Golden Rule, and justify 
the faith that the brotherhood of man is 
not an empty formula or a derisive fiction. 
Society is a fortuitous and accidental ag- 
gregation of individuals. Societies have 
done nothing in this world, nor ever will. 
The fundamental fact of Christian civiliza- 
tion is the immeasurable value of the indi- 
vidual soul. 

Individualism would lift all to the level 
of the highest. Socialism would drag all 
down to the level of the lowest. Individ- 
ualism is progress and life. Socialism is 
stagnation and death. 


Writings of John ]. Ingalls. 


41 


Men Are Not Created Equal. 

History is a series of repetitions. Those 
who have failed in life blame everybody 
but themselves. The complaint against fate 
is as old as Adam. It will end only with 
the epitaph of humanity. The distinctions 
between men were established by act of 
God, and they cannot be abolished by act 
of Congress. 

The time will never come when the 
race will not be to the swift and the bat- 
tle to the strong. Indolence will never have 
the same wage as thrift nor ignorance the 
same reward as wisdom. 

**#*#### 

The prosperous do not complain. The 
strong can take care of themselves. It is 
the feeble who must be lifted up and sup- 
ported, and to them the state owes its ob- 
ligations. It must protect the weak from 
oppression, the poor from extortion, the 


42 


Selections from the 


humble from injustice. It must secure uni- 
versal diffusion of civil and political rights, 
with vigorous guarantees for the security 
of life, liberty, and property. It must pro- 
vide education for the ignorant, refuge for 
the defective, asylum for the helpless, and 
give every man an equal chance to “get 
there” if he can. If he gels left, his name 
is “Dennis.” 

******** 

The future will be richer than the past. 
Vast as has been the progress of the race, 
there are greater triumphs to be won by 
those that have eyes to see and ears to hear. 

The medicine for the ills of society 
must be found, therefore, in individual cul- 
tivation and development, and the ultimate 
appeal must be to conscience and intelli- 
gence to protect liberty from the folly of its 
friends and the fury of its foes. 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 43 

The Poor Man’s Chance. 

The poor man’s chanfce depends very 
much on what the poor man has to sell. If 
his stock in trade consists of untrained mus- 
cle, a dull brain, and sullen discontent, he 
will work for wages, dine from a tin bucket 
when the noon whistle blows, and die de- 
pendent or a mendicant. If he have cour- 
age, industry, enterprise, foresight, luck, 
and the willing mind, he will gain compe- 
tence or fortune. He will establish his 
family in comfort, educate his children and 
accustom them to the environment of re- 
fined habits, which, after all, is the best 
of life. 

******** 
Society is reinforced from ^the bottom 
and not from the top. Families die out, 
fortunes are dispersed ; the recruits come 
from the farm, the forge, and the work- 
shop, and not from the club and the palace. 
Those who will control the destinies of the 


44 


Selections from the 


twentieth century are now boys wearing 
homespun and “hand-me-downs,” and not 
the gilded youth clad in purple and fine 
linen, and faring sumptuously every day at 
Sherry’s and Delmonico’s. This is the poor 
man’s chance. It is open to all comers. It 
is not a matter of law, or statute, or politics. 
* * * # # * * * 

The worst enemy of the poor man, ex- 
cept himself, is the trust, and of all forms 
of this odious tyranny the most intolerable 
is the labor trust. The money trust kills 
the body, the labor trust kills the soul. It 
destroys the independence of the laboring 
man, effaces his individuality, cancels ex- 
cellence, and substitutes brute force for 
intelligence. 

The right of labor to combine and to 
refuse to work for wages that employers 
are willing to pay is undeniable; but when 
strikers organize to prevent others from tak- 
ing their places by violence and murder, 
destroying property and subjecting great 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 45 

companies to enormous inconvenience, hard- 
ship, and loss, they attack the fundamental 
rights of citizenship and become outlaws 
and criminals, who ought to be extermi- 
nated. 


46 


Selections from the 


The Immortality of the Soul. 

Irrespective of creeds and theology, 
they are wise who would recognize God in 
the Constitution, because faith in a Supreme 
Being, in immortality and the compensations 
of eternity conduces powerfully to social 
order by enabling man to endure with com- 
posure the injustice of this world in the hope 
of reparation in that which is to come. 

Inasmuch as both force and matter are 
infinite and indestructible, and can be nei- 
ther added to nor subtracted from, it follows 
that in some form we have always existed, 
and that we shall continue in some form to 
exist forever. 

Whence we came into this life no one 
knows nor cares. Evolution, metempsycho- 
sis, reincarnation, are not beliefs. They are 
parts of speech, interesting only to the com- 
piler of lexicons. 

******** 

Unless man is immortal, the moral uni- 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 47 

verse, so far as he is concerned, disappears 
altogether. If he does not survive the 
grave, it makes no difference to him whether 
there be God or devil, or heaven or hell. 
And it must be not only a survival, but 
with a continuity of consciousness as well, 
if the evil are to be punished and the good 
rewarded hereafter. To inflict the penalty 
of violated law upon a being who does not 
know that he has offended, is not punish- 
ment, but revenge. Conscious identity may 
not be a necessary condition of intelligence, 
but it is essential in morals. It is conceiva- 
ble that a being may know without knowing 
that he knows; but he cannot sin without 
knowing that he sins, nor be punished un- 
less he knows for what wrong he suffers. 
t * * * * * * Then he 

referred to the insatiable hunger for knowl- 
edge; the efforts of the unconquerable mind 
to penetrate the mysteries of the future; its 
capacity to comprehend infinity and eter- 
nity; its desire for the companionship of the 


48 


Selections from the 


departed ; its unquenchable aspirations for 
immortality; and he asked, “Why should 
God keep faith with the beast, the bee, the 
fish, and the fowl, and cheat man?” 


Writings of John ]. Ingalls. 49 


The Character of General Grant 
— an Enigma. 

The character and destiny of Grant 
must always remain among the enigmas of 
history. 

No man ever did so much of whom so 
little could have been predicted. 

******** 

“No, there will be no trouble. But it has 
been one rule of my life to be always 
ready.” 

******** 

Toward midnight some one started a 
discussion as to the most desirable period 
of life : infancy, with its helpless uncon- 
sciousness; childhood, with its innocent en- 
joyment; youth, with its passions; manhood, 
with its achievements; age, with its repose. 
Some preferred one and some another. 
Grant had relapsed into silence again. 
Logan appealed to him for his opinion. He 
pondered a moment and replied; “Well, 


50 


Selections from the 


so far as I am concerned, I should like to 
be born again.” This seemed a very clever 
way of saying that he had enjoyed life all 
the way through. Logan retorted that he 
knew of no man who stood in greater need 
of being born again, and then we all went 
home. 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 51 


Why Christianity Has Triumphed. 

Whatever view may be held as to His 
divinity. He is the central character of hu- 
man destiny, the one colossal figure of human 
history. Caesar and Herod and Pilate, the 
kings, conquerors, and philosophers of that 
day, are names. No one cares that they 
lived or died, but Christ remains the living 
and most potential force in modern society. 

When He announced the fatherhood of 
God and the brotherhood of man, and the 
immeasurable value of the humblest human 
soul, He made kings and despots and ty- 
rants impossible. 

He laid the foundation of democratic 
self-government and the sovereignty of the 
people. From His teachings have come 
the emancipation of childhood, the eleva- 
tion of woman, and our rich and splendid 
heritage of religious, civil, and constitu- 
tional liberty. 

Indeed, without disparaging Confucius, 


52 


Selections from the 


Buddha, or Mohammed, it may be safe to 
assert that through Christianity alone has 
civilization come into the world. On the 
continued activity of its beneficent forces 
we must depend for its preservation; for the 
completion of man’s conquest over Nature; 
for the realization of the dream of the uni- 
versal Republic. 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 53 


Gettysburg Oration. 

* * * * * * The or- 

ator who speaks, and who shall speak upon 
every recurrence of this anniversary so long 
as time shall endure, no matter how great 
his fame or his name, will be dwarfed by 
the stupendous tragedy that was enacted 
here, and will stand in the presence of that 
mighty and colossal shadow, that greatest 
victim of the war, who, almost within the 
sound of my voice from the spot where we 
now stand, dedicated this field as a final 
resting-place for those who here died that 
the Nation might live; and in obedience to 
that impulse and that instinct, the American 
people have assembled to-day, under the 
holiest impulse of the human heart, to con- 
template and consider the profoundest and 
most insoluble mystery of human destiny — 
the insoluble problem of death. 

* * They went to battle for ideas; 

they endured the march, the bivouac, hos- 


54 


Selections from the 


pitals, wounds, diseases, hardships, and 
death, to save our cities from sack, our 
homes from spoilation, our flag from dis- 
honor, and our country from distraction, in 
order that all men everywhere might be 
free, that the States might be indestructible, 
that the Union might be indissoluble, and 
that this Nation might be perpetual. [Ap- 
plause.] 

* * * I should not have failed 

to have kept in some secure but sacred re- 
pository the Stars and Stripes which were 
the symbol of the honor and the emblem 
of the glory of my country, to which I 
should have taught my children to return 
with patriotic solicitude and affectionate 
veneration. 

* * * When this anniversai., 

shall dawn one hundred years hence, the 
grave of the last soldier of the Nation will 
long since have been covered with the fra- 
grant benediction of flowers; but the ideas 
for whose supremacy they contended will 


Writings of John ]. Ingalls. 


55 


survive, and their memory will be the ob- 
ject of their country’s loftiest pride and its 
tenderest solicitude. * * * Cap- 

ital will have just compensation, and labor 
due reward. We shall have liberty with- 
out license, taxation without oppression, 
wealth without ostentation, opportunities for 
education commensurate with the desire to 
know, and conditions of happiness as en- 
larged as the capacity to enjoy. 

* * * Sublime and impressive 

aspiration — fit to be engraved above the 
portals of Liberty’s chosen temple, worthy 
to be inscribed in every patriot’s heart — 
“That this Nation under God shall have a 
new birth of freedom, and that government 
of the people, by the people, and for the 
people, shall not perish from the earth.’’ 
[Loud and prolonged applause.] 


56 


Selections from the 


Address. 

(Delivered at Osawatomie, Kans., August 
30, 1877, by John J. Ingalls upon the 
occasion of the dedication of a monu- 
ment to the memory of John Brown 
and his associates.) 

* * * There were no nodding 

plumes, no haughty banners, no stirring 
blasts from the bugle calling the warriors 
to arms. But when Freedom recounts the 
sacrifices of her sons, she does not ask the 
number or rank of those who fell. Win- 
kelried is as dear to her as Washington, 
and Osawatomie is as sacred as Bannock- 
burn or Bunker Hill. At her behest to- 
day we reclaim from common dust the sa- 
cred , ashes of the martyrs of Osawatomie. 
The sunshine of innumerable summers shall 
smile upon this consecrated sward. The 
hearts of the generations that follow us 
shall swell at the contemplation of their 


Writings of John ] . Ingalls. 57 

heroic self-devotion and guard with jealous 
care this sacred sepulchre. 

******** 

What immortal and dauntless courage 
breathes in this procession of stately sen- 
tences; what fortitude; what patience; what 
faith ; what radiant and eternal hope ! 
Over his soul hovered the covenant of 
peace. He felt the lofty consciousness of 
“Deeds that are royal in a land beyond 
kings’ sceptres.” 

He trod the scaffold with the step of 
a conqueror, and the man whom Virginia 
executed as a felon Kansas to-day cannon- 
izes as a martyr. 

******** 

He believed there was no acquisition 
so splendid as moral purity; no possession 
nor inheritance so desirable as personal 
liberty ; nothing on this earth flor in the 
world to come so valuable as the soul, 
whatever be the hue of its bodily habita- 
tion; no impulse so lofty and heroic as an 


58 


Selections from the 


unconquerable purpose to love truth, and 
an invincible determination to obey God. 
******** 

I believe it is Carlyle who says that 
when any great change in human society or 
institutions is to be wrought, God raises up 
men to whom that change is made to ap- 
pear as the one thing needful and absolutely 
indispensable. Scholars, orators, poets, phi- 
lanthropists, play their parts; but the crisis 
comes through some one whom the world 
regards as a fanatic or impostor, and whom 
the supporters of the system he assails cru- 
cify between thieves or gibbet as a felon. 

* * * * The freedmen 

by their sobriety, their obedience to law, 
their decorous demeanor, justified the te- 
merity those who had dared to maintain 
that they possessed intelligence superior to 
beasts, and souls that were immortal. Dur- 
ing centuries of brutal and degrading bond- 
age, they had retained the typical charac- 
teristics of their race. Their virtues were 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 59 

their own; their vices were the offspring of 
the cruel system of which they had been 
the reluctant victims. Music and mirth en- 
livened the intervals of their unrequited 
toil. Loyalty and fidelity seemed the in- 
stincts of their nature. Patient of labor 
and obedient to law, they witnessed the 
prodigious accumulations derived from their 
unpaid industry without an effort to reclaim 
their own. Their local and personal at- 
tachments were intense. During the long 
moral combat that was the vestibule of the 
war they resisted the solicitations of those 
who believed that he who would be free 
himself must strike the blow, and continued 
faithful to the tyrants who had enslaved 
them. During the awful conflict that fol- 
lowed, when their emancipation became the 
integer, while their owners were doing des- 
perate battle to rivet more firmly the fetters 
that bound them, they peacefully tilled the 
fields and served the families of their mas- 


60 


Selections from the 


ters, waiting patiently for the hour of their 
deliverance to draw nigh. 

**###*** 

The alternative has been chosen, and 
the selection is irrevocable. There can be 
no footsteps backward. It is idle to quarrel 
with the inevitable. What has been done 
we cannot undo. Statesmanship has no 
concern with the past except to learn its 
lessons. Recrimination and hostile criticism 
are worse than useless. We must act in 
the present and go forward to meet the fu- 
ture. However much some may regret 
what they conceive to be a surrender of 
principles, an abandonment of friends, a 
falsification of history, and a confession 
that a great office is held by successful 
fraud, the path of wisdom is plain. We 
must wait the result of the experiment. We 
must insist upon a rigid observance of the 
guaranties of freedom contained in the Con- 
stitution, and if they are violated, we must 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 61 

invoke that revolt of the national conscience 
which sooner or later is sure to come. 
******** 

But no man is ever convinced by being 
overpowered. Force cannot extirpate ideas. 
They are immortal. Their vitality is inex- 
tinguishable. They cannot be annihilated. 
They may be for a time repressed, but they 
never die. War does not change the opin- 
ions of the victors nor the vanquished. It 
proves nothing, except which combatant has 
the deepest purse and the toughest muscle. 

* * There can be no truce between 

right and wrong. In the conflict of ideas 
there can be no armistice. The gigantic 
revolution through which we have passed 
did not arise upon a point of etiquette, and 
it cannot be ended by a polite apology. It 
was a great struggle between two hostile 
and enduring forces, which must continue 
until one or the other shall become dis- 
placed and expelled from our system of 
Government. It must go on either till the 


62 


Selections from the 


right of one man, or class, by violence or 
force, to prescribe the opinions, control the 
acts, and define the political relations of 
others is freely conceded, or until the right 
of every individual, however humble, to 
think, act, or vote in accordance with the 
suggestions of his own judgment and con- 
science under the law shall be absolutely 
unquestioned. 

Kansas is yet in her youth. She has 
no associations that are venerable by age. 
All her dead have been the contemporaries 
of those who yet live. The verdict of pos- 
terity can only be anticipated. But, like 
all communities, we have had our heroic 
era, and it has closed. It terminated with 
the war which began within our borders, 
and it deserves a national commenoration. 
I believe the concurring judgment of man- 
kind would designate him as the conspicu- 
ous representative of this period in our his- 
tory, and while his image yet exists in the 


Writings of John ]. Ingalls. 63 


memories of his cotemporaries, so that ac- 
curate portraiture is possible, I hope the 
people of Kansas will honor themselves by 
procuring his statue to be placed in this hall 
as a gift to the Nation. 

* * * * In a brief space we 
shall all be dispersed by death, and our 
homes, our fields, our possessions, our dig- 
nities, our duties will descend to our pos- 
terity. Let us bequeath to them unimpaired 
the priceless heritage which we have re- 
ceived from those who attested their faith 
with their lives. And if in the distant 
future the guarantees of constitutional lib- 
erty shall be assailed, and the patriot of 
another age turn for inspiration to this, he 
will find no grander example of heroic zeal 
and lofty self-devotion than “Old John 
Brown of Osawatomie.” 


64 


Selections from the 


Eulogy on the Death of Senator 
James B. Beck, of Kentucky. 

* * * Though he never forgot 

his nativity, nor the associations of his 
youth, he as by choice and preference, and 
not from necessity, an American. In his 
broad and generous nature patriotism was 
a passion and allegiance a sacred and un- 
alterable obligation. A partisan by in- 
stinct and conviction, there was nothing ig- 
noble in his partisanship. He transgressed 
the boundaries of party in his friendships, 
and no appeal to his sympathy or compas- 
sion was ever made in vain. 

******** 

The right to live is, in human estima- 
tion, the most sacred, the most inviolable, 
the most inalienable. The joy of living in 
such a splendid and luminous day as this 
is inconceivable. To exist is exultation. 
To live forever is our sublimest hope. An- 
nihilation, extinction, and eternal death are 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 


65 


the forebodings of despair. To know, to 
love, to achieve, to triumph, to confer hap- 
piness, to alleviate misery, is rapture. The 
greatest crime and the severest penalty 
known to human law is the sacrifice and 
forfeiture of life. 

* * * Nations die, and races 

expire. Humanity itself is destined to ex- 
tinction. Sooner or later, it is the instruc- 
tion of science, that the energy of the earth 
will be expended and it will become in- 
capable of supporting life. A group of 
feeble and pallid survivors in some shel- 
tered valley in the tropics will behold the 
sun sink below the horizon and the pitiless 
stars glitter in the midnight sky. The last 
man will perish, and the sun will rise upon 
the earth without an inhabitant. Its at- 
mosphere, its seas, its light and heat will 
vanish, and the planet will be an idle cinder 
uselessly spinning in its orbit. 


66 


Selections from the 


Eulogy on the Death of Congress- 
man James N. Burnes, of 
Missouri. 

In the democracy of the dead all men 
at last are equal. There is neither rank 
nor station nor prerogative in the republic 
of the grave. At this fatal threshold the 
philosopher ceases to be wise, and the song 
of the poet is silent. Dives relinquishes his 
millions and Lazarus his rags. The poor 
man is as rich as the richest, and the rich 
man is as poor as the pauper. The cred- 
itor loses his usury, and the debtor is ac- 
quitted of his obligation. There the proud 
man surrenders his dignities, the* politician 
his honors, the worldling his pleasures; the 
invalid needs no physician, and the laborer 
rests from unrequited toil. 

* * * But if death be the end; 

if the life of Burnes terminated upon “this 
bank and shoal of time,” if no morning is 


/ 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 


67 


to dawn upon the night in which he sleeps 
— then sorrow has no consolation, and this 
impressive and solemn ceremony which we 
observe to-day has no more significance than 
the painted pageant of the stage. If the 
existence of Burnes was but a troubled 
dream, his death oblivion, what avails it 
that the Senate should pause to recount his 
virtues; and that his associates should as- 
semble in solemn sorrow around his voice- 
less sepulchre? Neither veneration nor rev- 
erence is due the dead if they are but dust; 
no cenotaph should be reared to preserve 
for posterity the memory of their achieve- 
ments if those who come after them are to 
be only their successors in annihilation and 
extinction. 

If the life of Burnes is as a taper that 
is burned out, then we treasure his memory 
and his example in vain, and the latest 
prayer of his departing spirit has no more 
sanctity to us, who soon or late must follow 


68 


Selections from the 


him, than the whisper of winds that stir 
the leaves of the protesting forest, or the 
murmur of waves that break upon the com- 
plaining shore. 


W ritings of John ]. Ingalls. 69 


Fiat Justitia. 

As slaves they drained the marshes, 
they felled the forests, they cultivated the 
fields, and assisted by their unrequited toil 
in piling up the accumulated wealth of the 
Nation. And, sir, while their masters were 
absent in camp and field, doing battle to 
rivet more firmly the chains by which they 
were bound and to make slavery the corner- 
stone of a new social and political struct- 
ure, they remained upon the plantations and 
in the cities in charge of the estates and of 
the families of their owners, raising the sup- 
plies without which the war could not have 
been prolonged. General insurrections and 
servile uprisings would have dissolved the 
Confederate armies; but they did not oc- 
cur. Docile, faithful, and submissive, the 
slaves were guilty of no violence against 
person or property. They lighted no mid- 
night flame; they shed no innocent blood. 
It seems incredible that gratitude should not 


70 


Selections from the 


have defended and sheltered them from 
the hideous and indescribable wrongs and 
crimes of which they have been for a quar- 
ter of a century the guiltless and unresisting 
victims. 

******** 
The date when patience will cease can- 
not be predicted, but though the precise time 
cannot be foretold, it will come; and that 
it will come in peace or in blood is the in- 
exorable decree of destiny. The same pas- 
sions that resented colonial dependence, that 
substituted the Union for the confederation, 
that have overthrown State sovereignty, slav- 
ery, and every other obstacle in the path of 
liberty, justice, and nationality, may slum- 
ber, but they are not dead. They have ac- 
quired greater strength with their exercise at 
every stage of our growth and progress. The 
compromises of politicians seeking for place 
and power, the shifts of traders wanting 
gain, the cowardice of the timid, who desire 
peace at the sacrifice of honor, will not pre- 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 


71 


vail. Sooner or later they will shrivel and 
be consumed away in some sudden blaze 
like that which flashed and flamed from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific when John Brown 
at Harper’s Ferry fired the gun whose rever- 
berations died away at Appomattox. [Ap- 
plause.] 


72 


Selections from the 


“The Image and Superscription of 
Caesar.’’ 

* * * For all the purposes for 

which existence is valuable in this world — 
for comfort, for convenience, for opportu- 
nity, for intelligence, for power of locomo- 
tion, and superiority to the accidents and the 
fatalities of Nature — the fewest in years 
among us, Mr. President, has lived longer 
and has lived more worthily than Methu- 
selah in all his stagnant centuries. 

* * * The centuries crept from 

improvement to improvement with tardy, 
sluggish steps, as if Nature were unwilling 
to acknowledge the mastery of man. 

* * * * There has never been 

a time since the angel stood with the flam- 

ing sword before the gates of Eden when 
the dollar of invested capital paid as low a 
return in interest as it does to-day; nor has 
there been an hour when the dollar that is 
earned by the laboring man would buy so 


Writings of John ]. Ingalls. 73 

much of everything that is essential for the 
welfare of himself and his family as it will 
to-day. 

* * * * This class, Mr. Pres- 

ident, I am glad to say, is not confined to 
this country alone. These gigantic accumu- 
lations have not been the result of industry 
and economy. There would be no protest 
against them if they were. There is an an- 
ecdote floating around the papers, speaking 
about beer, that some gentleman said to the 
keeper of a saloon that he would give him a 
recipe for selling more beer, and when he 
inquired what it was, he said: “Sell less 
froth.” [Laughter.] If the millionaires 
and speculators of this country are the froth 
upon the beer of our system, the time has 
come when we should sell more beer by 
selling less froth. [Laughter.] 

* * * * I repeat that the peo- 

ple are not anarchists; they are not social- 
ists; they are not communists; but they have 
suddenly waked to the conception of the 


74 Selections from the 

fact that the bulk of the property of the 
country is passing into the hands of what 
the Senator from Ohio by an euphemism 
calls the “speculators” of the world, not of 
America alone. They infest the financial 
and social systems of every country upon 
the face of the earth. They are the men 
of no politics, neither Democrat nor Repub- 
lican. They are the men of all nationalities 
and of no nationality, with no politics but 
plunder, and with no principle but the spoli- 
ation of the human race. 

* * * I have no sympathy with 

that school of political economists which 
teaches that there is an irreconciliable con- 
flict between labor and capital, and which 
demands indiscriminate, hostile, and repres- 
sive legislation against men because they are 
rich and corporations because they are strong. 
Labor and capital should not be antago- 
nists, but allies rather. They should not 
be opponents and enemies, but colleagues 
and auxiliaries whose cooperating rivalry is 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 75 


essential to national prosperity. But I can- 
not forbear to affirm that a political system 
under which such despotic power can be 
wrested from the people and vested in a few 
is a democracy only in name. 

* * * The earth has not forgot- 

ten to yield her increase. There has been 
no general failure of harvests. We have 
had benignant skies and the early and the 
latter rain. Neither famine nor pestilence 
has decimated our population nor wasted its 
energies. Immigration is flowing in from 
every land, and we are in the lusty prime 
of national youth and strength, with unex- 
ampled resources and every stimulus to their 
development; but, sir, the great body of the 
American people are engaged to-day in 
studying these problems that I have sug- 
gested in this morning hour. They are dis- 
heartened with misfortune. They are weary 
with unrequited toil. They are tired of the 
exactions of the speculators. They desire 
peace and rest. 

******** 


76 


Selections from the 


“We cannot disguise the truth that we 
are on the verge of an impending revolution. 
The old issues are dead. The people are 
arraying themselves upon one side or the 
other of a portentous contest. On one side 
is capital, formidably intrenched in privilege, 
arrogant from continued triumph, conserva- 
tive, tenacious of old theories, demanding 
new concessions, enriched by domestic levy 
and foreign commerce, and struggling to ad- 
just all values to its own standard. On the 
other is labor, asking for employment, striv- 
ing to develop domestic industries, battling 
with the forces of Nature, and subduing 
the wilderness; labor, starving and sullen in 
cities, resolutely determined to overthrow a 
system under which the rich are growing 
richer and the poor are growing poorer; a 
system which gives to a Vanderbilt the pos- 
session of wealth beyond the dreams of av- 
arice, and condemns the poor to a poverty 
which has no refuge from starvation but the 
prison or the grave. 


Writings of John J. Ingalls . 77 


Our demands for relief, for justice, 
have been met with indifference or disdain. 
The laborers of the country asking for em- 
ployment are treated like impudent mendi- 
cants begging for bread.” 

******** 

When I went West, Mr. President, as 
a carpetbagger in 1858, St. Louis was an 
outpost of civilization, Jefferson City was the 
farthest point reached by a railroad, and in 
all that great wilderness, extending from the 
sparse settlements along the Missouri to the 
summits of the Sierra Nevada and from the 
Y ellowstone to the canyons of the Rio 
Grande, a vast solitude from which I have 
myself since that time voted to admit seven 
States into the American Union, there was 
neither harvest nor husbandry, neither hab- 
itation nor home, save the hut of the hunter 
and the wigwam of the savage. 

******** 

What would be the effect? Would 
not this country be worth exactly as much 


78 


Selections from the 


as it is to-day? Would there not be just 
as many acres of land, as many houses, as 
many farms, as many days of labor, as 
much improved and unimproved merchan- 
dise, and as much property as there is to- 
day? The result would be that commerce 
would languish, the sails of the ships would 
be furled in the harbors, the great trains 
would cease to run to and fro on their er- 
rands, trade would be reduced to barter, 
and, the people finding their energies lan- 
guishing, civilization itself would droop, and 
we should be reduced to the condition of the 
nomadic wanderers upon the primeval plains. 
¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥ 

I hold, Mr. President, between my 
thumb and finger a silver denarius, or 
“penny” of that ancient time, perhaps the 
identical coin that was brought by the hyp- 
ocritical Herodian, bearing the image and 
superscription of Caesar. It has been money 
for more than twenty centuries. It was 
money when Jesus walked the waves, and 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 


79 


in the tragic hour at Gethsemane. Imperial 
Caesar is “dead and turned to clay.” He 
has yielded to a mightier conqueror, and his 
eagles, his ensigns, and his trophies are in- 
distinguishable dust. His triumphs and his 
victories are a school-boy’s tale. Rome her- 
self is but a memory. Her marble porticos 
and temples and palaces are in ruins. The 
sluggish monk and the lazy lazzaroni haunt 
the Senate House and the Coliseum, and 
the derisive owl wakes the echoes of the 
voiceless Forum. 

******** 
Mr. President, money is the creation of 
law, and the American people have learned 
that lesson, and they are indifferent to the 
assaults, they are indifferent to the argu- 
ments, they are indifferent to the aspersions 
which are cast upon them for demanding 
that the law of the United States shall place 
the image and superscription of Caesar upon 
silver enough and gold enough and paper 
enough to enable them to transact without 


80 


Selections from the 


embarrassment, without hindrance, without 
delay, and without impoverishment their 
daily business affairs, and that shall give 
them a measure of value that will not make 
their earnings and their belongings the sport 
and the prey of speculators. 

* * Out of every conflict some 
man or sect or nation has emerged with 
more privileges, enlarged opportunities, purer 
religion, broader liberty, and greater capac- 
ity for happiness; and out of this conflict in 
which we are now engaged I am confident 
finally will come liberty, justice, equality; 
the continental unity of the American Re- 
public, the social fraternity and the indus- 
trial independence of the American people. 
[Applause in the galleries.] 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 


81 


The Humorous Side of Politics. 

Had he possessed a greater flexibility 
of temper, been less inexorable in his animos- 
ities, and learned how to forget where he 
could not forgive, there was no height he 
might not have reached, even the highest in 
the people’s gift. But he would not flatter 
Neptune for his trident, nor Jove for his 
power to thunder. 

It seems incredible that a personage of 
such vast and unusual powers, who for 
twenty years was a most prominent actor in 
the great drama of public affairs, who filled 
so large a space in the thought of the peo- 
ple, who was caricatured, lampooned, prais- 
ed, and reviled without stint or measure, 
should have faded so absolutely from the 
memory of men. Even to those of his con- 
temporaries who survive, he has already be- 
come a gorgeous reminiscence. 

Patriotic, arrayed always for truth, 
right, and justice, his name is identified with 


82 


Selections from the 


no great measure, and his life seems not so 
much an actual battle with hostile powers 
as a splendid scene upon the stage, of which 
the swords are lath, the armor tinsel, the 
bastions and ramparts painted screens, the 
wounds and blood fictitious; on which vic- 
tories and defeats are feigned, with sheet- 
iron thunder, and tempests of peas and lyco- 
podium — and the curtain falling to slow 
music, while the audience applauds and 
departs. 

#*«*#*** 
The characteristic of his conversation 
was a genial and humorous urbanity. He 
never wounded or stung. He seldom told 
stories or related anecdotes. His wit was 
like a spring that makes the meadows green. 
He appreciated what was best in society, 
art, literature, and life, and had the keenest 
interest in the virtues and foibles of human- 
ity. His manner was refined and suave. 
He never posed, nor monopolized, nor strain- 
ed for effect; and as he never hurt self-love 


Writings of John ]. Ingalls. 83 


by irony, nor vanity by ridicule and satire, 
so he never shocked the devout by profan- 
ity, nor offended the modest with impudicity. 

Probably the mot of Mr. Evarts most 
widely flown concerns the apochryphal feat 
told of George Washington in “jerking” a 
silver dollar across the Rappahannock. 


84 


Selections from the 


Famous Feuds. 

The chief actors in this stupendous 
drama have all crossed the frontier of the 
dark kingdom. After life’s fitful fever, they 
sleep well or ill ; but whether well or ill, they 
sleep. They played mighty parts. They 
appealed to the passions of a majestic audi- 
ence. The curtain has fallen; the lights are 
out; the orchestra has gone; and upon an- 
other stage we have the continuous perform- 
ance, vaudeville and marionettes. 


W ritings of John J. Ingalls. 85 


The Mountains. 

When you look upon the vague and 
troubled immensity of the ocean, you think 
of commerce and codfish and whales. When 
you contemplate the grassy waste of prairies, 
expanding to the skies, you think of wheat 
and corn and pigs and steers. But Pike’s 
Peak and Sierra Blanca and Trenchery and 
Culebra and the Tetons are good for noth- 
ing except adoration and worship. Man 
does not profane their solitudes where the 
unheard voices of the winds in the forests, 
of waters falling in the abyss, and the 
eagle’s cry have no audience nor anniver- 
sary. 


86 


Selections from the 


The Sea. 

But there is something more than change 
of locality in the isolation of a long ocean 
voyage. When the last dim headland dis- 
appears, and the continent vanishes in the 
deep, the separation from the human race 
is complete. All the accustomed incidents 
and habits of daily life are suspended, and 
those who are assembled in that casual so- 
ciety might be the solitary survivors of man- 
kind. 

Wars and catastrophes and bereave- 
ments may shock the world, but here they 
are unheard and unknown. Suns rise and 
set and rise again, but the great ship makes 
no apparent progress. She remains the cen- 
tre of an unchanging circumference. The 
vast and sombre monotony is unbroken. 
Above is the infinite abyss of the sky with 
its clouds and stars. Beneath is the infinite 
abyss of the sea with its winds and waves. 
Sometimes the faint phantom of a sail ap- 


Writings of John ]. Ingalls. 8? 


pears above the vague fluctuating horizon 
and silently fades away, or a stain of smoke 
against the distant mist discloses the path- 
way of some remote and unknown tenant of 
the solitude. 

In the presence of this implacable en- 
emy, whose smiles betray, whose voice is 
an imprecation, whose embrace is death, 
meditation becomes habitual and the mind 
changes like the sky. 


88 


Selections from the 


Idyl. 

Was it on this planet we lived alone, 
and loved in youth’s enchanted kingdom 
amid the forests and by the great lonely 
river, looking with mingled gaze at the east- 
ern bluffs purpled by the autumnal sunset, 
or at the face of the moon climbing with 
sad steps the midnight sky; or was it on 
some remote star in some other life, recalled 
with rapture and longing unutterable and 
unavailing? 

“Oh, death in life; the days that are no 
more!’’ 

* * * Nature mocks with her 

permanence the mutability of man; and the 
steadfast presence recalling life’s vanished 
glory and bloom and dew of morning — how 
worthless and empty appear all that time 
gives, compared with what it takes away! 
How gladly would wc exchange the prizes 
of ambition and fame and wealth for the 
splendid consecration of youth and — 

“Wild with all regret — the days that are 
no more.’’ 


Writings of John ]. Ingalls. 


89 


Epigrams. 

Trusts and labor unions are inseparable 
evils. They are twin relics of barbarism. 
******** 

Socialism is the final refuge of those 
who have failed in the struggle for life. It 
is the prescription of those who were born 
tired. 

******** 

The man who is unhappy when he is 
poor would be unhappy if he were rich. A 
beggar may be happier in his rags than a 
king in his purple. Happiness is an endow- 
ment, and not an acquisition. 

******** 

Whether in the battle to-morrow I shall 
survive or not, let it be said of me, that to 
the oppressed of every clime; to the Irish- 
man suffering from the brutal acts of Great 
Britain, or to the slave in the bayou of the 
South, I hava at all times and places been 
their advocate; and to the soldier, his wid- 


90 


Selections from the 


ow and orphans, I have been their protect- 
or and friend. 

******** 

In the democracy of the dead all men 
at last are equal. There is neither rank nor 
station nor prerogative in the republic of 
the grave. At this vital threshold the phi- 
losopher ceases to be wise, and the song of 
the poet is silent. Dives casts off his pur- 
ple, and Lazarus his rags; the poor man is 
rich as the richest, and the rich man as poor 
as the pauper. The creditor loses his usury, 
and the debtor is acquitted of his obligation. 
There the proud man surrenders his digni- 
ties, the politician his honors, the worldling 
his pleasures; the invalid needs no physician, 
and the laborer rests from his unrequited 
toil. Here at last is Nature’s final decree 
in equity. 

******** 
The purification of politics is an irides- 
cent dream. Government is force. Politics 
is a battle for supremacy. Parties are the 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 91 

armies. The Decalogue and the Golden 
Rule have no place in a political campaign. 
The object is success. To defeat the an- 
tagonist and expel the party in power is the 
purpose. 


92 


Selections from the 


Garfield: The Man of the People. 

Poverty may be a misfortune, uncom- 
fortable and hard to endure; but as an ele- 
ment of strength in public life it cannot be 
disregarded. 

* * * * The defects of his 

boyish training and scholarship, the narrow 
poverty of his youth, the humble avocations 
of his early manhood, the modest simplicity 
of his later life were favorable to his for- 
tunes. They kept him at the level of the 
masses from whom he sprung, not alienated 
from them by extraordinary endowments, 
wealth, or special refinement, but exhibiting 
only a higher degree or more vigorous activ- 
ity of the qualities and powers usual among 
men ; industry, patience, integrity ; so that 
the great body of citizens in supporting him 
appeared to be indirectly paying tribute of 
respect to themselves, and not yielding either 
voluntary or reluctant obedience to a su- 


perior. 


W ri tings of John ]. Ingalls. 


93 


I spoke to a friend, who stood near me 
in the hem of the audience, of the strange 
mutations of fortune the spectacle suggested 
to me, little thinking then of the yet more 
memorable vicissitudes so soon to follow ; 
the abrupt termination of those magnificent 
hopes and ambitions through the dark vista 
of the near future ; the sudden catastrophe 
of an exasperated destiny; premature death 
on the threshold of incomparable prophecy 
of greatness and renown. Could coming 
events cast their shadows before, he might 
have discerned those words of doom, the 
last that were ever traced by his feeble and 
trembling hand — “ Strangulatus pro repub - 
lica /” 

***** 
American Presidents have not always 
been the highest types of manhood. Selected 
usually because they were available, rather 
than because they were fit, they have in- 
spired litttle enthusiasm except among those 
apnointed to office. 


94 


Selections from the 


Garfield touched life at more points 
than most men. There was no company in 
which he could be wholly a stranger, nor 
any man, however low or however lofty, in 
whom he could not find something in com- 
mon, so that he was never isolated nor de- 
tached from his associates at any stage of 
his pathway, from the rude hut of his na- 
tivity, in the clearing of the Ohio forest, to 
the fatal eminence from which he was borne 
to his grave. 

But as no public man, whatever his 
powers, can greatly succeed unless identified 
with some idea, purpose, or conviction exist- 
ing in the minds of the people, so in this 
respect Garfield was most fortunate. His 
life was a strenuous protest against injustice. 
He was an apostle for liberty of conscience, 
liberty of action, and liberty of thought. 
He had mastered the statistics and enlarged 
the boundaries of freedom. The public 
honor, faith, and credit were as valuable to 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 95 


him as his own, and he labored without 
ceasing that the creed of human rights 
should not be an empty formula, nor the 
brotherhood of man a mocking dream. 
******** 

Such a revelation of mental and moral 
deformity has seldom been made. Not one 
good deed nor any generous impulse marred 
the harmonious and symmetrical infamy of 
the life of the wretched malefactor. He 
was insane as the tiger and the cobra are 
insane. He stands detached from mankind 
in eternal isolation as the one human being 
without a virtue, and without an apologist, 
a defender, or a friend. Even among the 
basest, he had no comrade. There was no 
society in which he would not be a stranger. 
He was the one felon whom no lawyer 
could protect, no jury acquit, for he was 
condemned in that forum from whose ver- 
dict there is neither exculpation nor appeal. 
He must be an alien in hell. 


96 


Selections from the 


The bearers were followed into trie Ro- 
tunda by Vice-President Arthur, the Cab- 
inet, and the Committees, all other spec- 
tators being excluded. As the casket was 
placed upon the same catafalque that had 
borne the coffin of Lincoln the last rays of 
the setting sun streamed through the golden 
haze along the low horizon above the hills 
of Arlington and filled the upper portion of 
the dome, above the still unfinished frescoes 
of Brumidi, with vanishing radiance, while 
the sombre shadows of twilight had already 
settled upon the silent group below. 

The lid was laid back, and the official 
procession, led by Arthur, every inch a king, 
arm in arm with Blaine, pallid and hag- 
gard, who looked as if, with Mark An- 
tony, he might have said, 

“Bear with me! 

My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, 
And I must pause till it come back to me,’’ 
marched slowly eastward, and departed. 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 97 


Across the space was Grant, his impas- 
sive, resolute, sphinx-like face bent forward, 
intently pensive, as though inwardly medi- 
tating upon the strange mutation by which 
the man who snatched from his grasp the 
coveted prize of a third nomination, so near- 
ly won, now lay in cold obstruction and 
everlasting silence, where ambition could no 
longer inspire nor glory thrill. 

The pageant on the day of the burial 
was indescribable. The cessation of busi- 
ness, the dense blackness of the festoons of 
drapery, the stillness and awe of the spec- 
tators, the multitudes so immense that they 
became impersonal and conveyed only the 
idea of numbers, mass, and volume, like the 
leaves of a forest or the sands of the sea; 
the lofty hearse with its twelve led horses 
completely caparisoned in black, with silver 
fringes sweeping the ground; the dirges of 
bands and bells, all contributed to a spec- 
tacle that can neither be described nor 
forgotten. 


98 


Selections from the 


Blaine’s Life Tragedy. 

The secret of personal popularity, the 
power of exciting irrational and vehement 
devotion to its object, has never been de- 
tected. If it is not possessed, it cannot be 
acquired. It is an art for which there is 
no text-book nor any teacher. A man may 
well enough say he will be learned, upright, 
successful, respected, a politician, or a diplo- 
mat, but not that he will be the idol of the 
people. This is beyond his acumen. The 
gift is rare. Its beneficiary seldom appears 
oftener than once in a generation. It is 
quite independent of endowment and capac- 
ity. Calhoun was a greater man than Clay, 
and Webster was intellectually far the su- 
perior of either; but Clay aroused in the 
masses of his party a passionate fervor of 
adoration that was like religious fanaticism 
in its intensity. 

******** 
There were giants in those days, war- 


Writings of John ]. Ingalls. 


99 


riors and statesmen, between whom and 
Blaine in service, capacity, and equipment, 
there was no comparison. Other reputa- 
tions may far surpass his in the annals of 
the Macaulay of our times, but in the power 
to move and stir and thrill, to inspire uncon- 
trollable enthusiasm, the name of Blaine, 
like that of Abou Ben Adhem, will lead 
all the rest. Other leaders were admired, 
loved, honored, revered, respected; but the 
sentiment for Blaine was delirium. The 
mention of his name in the convention was 
the signal for a cyclone. Applause was a 
paroxysm. His appearance in a campaign 
aroused frenzy that was like the madness of 
intoxication. 

But in running debate, which is like a 
duel with swords, Blaine was the Cyrano 
de Bergerac of his generation. Imperturb- 
able, versatile, confident, never disconcerted, 
at the last line he hit. 


100 


Selections from the 


The accession of Arthur gave that ur- 
bane and imperturbable politician an oppor- 
tunity to which he was not equal. He was 
meshed in complications he could not un- 
ravel. 

He trod the paths of his feet with mar- 
velous circumspection, but the labyrinth was 
too intricate, and he lost the clue. His per- 
sonal bearing was princely and incompara- 
ble. His presence was majestic, and his 
manners were so engaging that no one left 
him after even the briefest interview without 
a sentiment of personal regard. 

******** 

Like the chorus of an anthem, with 
measured solemnity, the galleries chanted, 
“Blaine! Blaine! James G. Blaine!” myr- 
iads of stamping feet keeping barbaric 
rhythm, whil'e plumes and banners waved, 
and women with flags and scarfs filled the 
atmosphere with motion and color and light. 

It was the passing of Blaine. That 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 101 


gigantic demonstration was at once a salu- 
tation and a requiem. The Republican 
party there took leave of their dying leader, 
and bad him an eternal farewell. 


102 


Selections from the 


Kansas: 1541 — 1891 . 

The confines of the valleys are the 
“bluffs,” no higher than the general level 
of the land, worn into ravines and gulches 
by frost and wind and rain, carving the 
limestone ledges into fantastic architecture, 
and depositing at their base an alluvion of 
inexhaustible fertility. Dense forests of elm, 
cottonwood, walnut, and sycamore, man- 
tled with parasitic growths, clothe the cliffs 
and crags with verdure, and gradually en- 
croach upon the “rolling prairies.” The eye 
wanders with tranquil satisfaction and un- 
alloyed delight over these fluctuating fields, 
treeless except along the margins of the in- 
dolent streams ; gorgeous in summer with 
the fugitive splendor of grass and flowers, 
in autumn billows of bronze, and in winter 
desolate with the melancholy glory of un- 
dulating snows. 

******** 
The incipient commonwealth lay in the 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 103 


westward path of empire — the zone within 
which the great commanders, orators, phi- 
losophers, and prophets of the world have 
been born; in which its Savior was crucified; 
in which its decisive battles were fought, its 
victories over man and Nature won; the 
triumphs of humanity and civilization 
achieved. 

###***** 

He was the object of inexplicable idol- 
atry and unspeakable execration. With his 
partisans, the superlatives of adulation were 
feeble and meagre; with his foes, the lex- 
icon of infamy contained no epithets suffi- 
ciently lurid to express their abhorrence and 
detestation. They alleged that he never 
paid a debt nor told the truth, save by ac- 
cident or on compulsion, and that to reach 
the goal of his ambition he had no convic- 
tions he would not sell, made no promise 
he would not break, and had no friend he 
would not betray. 

* * * He was like a thread of 


104 


Selections from the 


gold shot through the rough woof of the 
frontier. Though not of heroic stature, his 
dark, vivacious countenance, the rich mel- 
ody of his voice, and his impressive elocu- 
tion, gave him great power as an orator. 
He possessed the fatal gift of fluency, but, 
wanting depth and sincerity, seemed like an 
actor seeking applause, rather than a leader 
striving to direct, or a statesman endeavor- 
ing to convince the understanding of his 
followers. His service in Congress demand- 
ed the indulgent judgment of his constitu- 
ents, and failing of an election to the Sen- 
ate when the State was admitted, he yielded 
to the allurements of appetite, squandered 
two fortunes in travel and pleasure, and 
the splendid light of his prophetic morning 
sank lower and lower until it was quenched 
in the outer darkness of gloom and deso- 
lation. 

* * * Every one is on the 7 ui 

vive, alert, vigilant, like a sentinel at an out- 
post. Existence has the excitement of a 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 105 


game of chance, of a revolution, of a battle 
whose event is doubtful. The unprec- 
edented environment has produced a tem- 
perament volatile and mercurial, marked 
by uncalculating ardor, enterprise, intrepid- 
ity and insatiable hunger for innovation, out 
of which has grown a society that has been 
alternately the reproach and the marvel of 
mankind. 

* * United in vociferous and persist- 

ent affirmation that Kansas is the best State 
in the most glorious country on the finest 
planet in the solar system; that its soil is the 
richest, its climate the most salubrious, its 
men the most enterprising, its women the 
most beautiful, its children the most docile, 
its horses the fastest, its cattle the largest, 
its sheep the woolliest, its hogs the fattest, 
its grasshoppers the most beneficent, its bliz- 
zard the warmest, its cyclones the mildest, its 
droughts the wettest, its hot winds the cold- 
est, its past the most glorious, its present the 
most prophetic, its destiny the most sublime. 


106 


Selections from the 


* * * * Platitudes are un- 

known, and all epithets are superlative Im- 
agination predominates; established formu- 
las, and maxims are disregarded. Upon 
the rainless and sterile uplands the strata of 
the earth are pierced for water; and mar- 
ble, paint, cement, fire-clay, gypsum, coal, 
and salt are discovered in the descent. If 
chinch-bugs and noxious insects attack his 
crops, parasites and epidemics are imported 
for their destruction. Foiled and thwarted 
by the baffling clouds, the undaunted hus- 
bandman bombards the invisible moisture of 
the firmament with explosive balloons, and 
effusively welcomes the meteorological jug- 
gler who summons with his incantations 
aqueous spirits from the vasty deep. The 
faith which removes mountains into the sea 
animates every citizen, and rejects the im- 
possible with calm disdain. 

******** 

The Arabs say that he who drinks of the 
Nile must always thirst; no other waters can 


W Tilings of John J . Ingalls. 107 


quench or satisfy. So those who have done 
homage and taken the oath of fealty to 
Kansas can never be alienated or forsworn. 
The love of the people for their State is not 
so much a vague sentiment as an insatiable 
passion. * * * * * * * 

The cross which Coronado reared at 
the verge of his wanderings long since moul- 
dered, and the ashes of the adventurer have 
slept for ages in their ancestral sepulcre in 
Spain. He found neither Quivera’s phantom 
towers nor Cibola’s gems and gold; but a 
fairer capital than that he sought to despoil 
has risen like an exhalation from the solitude 
he trod, and richer treasure than he craved 
has rewarded the toilers of an alien race. 
Upon their effulgent shield shines a star 
emerging from stormy clouds to the constel- 
lation of the Union, and beneath they have 
written, “ Ad astra per aspera ,” an emblem 
of the past, by whose contemplation they 
are exalted, the prophecy of that nobler 
future to which they confidently aspire. 


108 


Selections from the 


Kansas. 

Kansas is the focus of freedom, where 
the rays of heat and light concentrated into a 
flame that melted the manacles of the slave 
and cauterized the heresies of State sov- 
ereignty and disunion. 

¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥ 

Kansas was the prologue to a tragedy 
whose epilogue has not yet been pronounced ; 
the prelude to a fugue of battles whose 
reverberations have not yet died away. 
¥¥¥¥¥¥¥¥ 

The normal condition of the genuine 
Kansan is that of shy and sensitive diffidence. 
He suffers from excess of modesty. He 
blushes too easily. There is nothing he 
dislikes so much as to hear himself talk. 
He hides his light under a bushel. He 
keeps as near the tail-end of the procession 
as possible. He never advertises. He 
bloweth not his own horn, and is indifferent 
to the band-wagon. 


Writings of John J. Ingalls. 109 


No other State encounters such formid- 
ble obstacles of Nature and Fortune. Our 
disasters and catastrophes have been monu- 
mental. Swarmls of locusts eclipsing' the 
sun in their flight, whose incredible voracity 
left the forests, and the orchards, and the 
fields of June as naked as December; 
drouths changing the sky to brass and the 
earth to iron; siroccos that in a day devas- 
tated provinces and reduced thousands from 
comfort to penury — these and the other de- 
structive agencies of the atmosphere have 
been met by a courage that no danger could 
daunt, and by a constancy unshaken by 
adversity. 

******** 

And this is but the dawn. We stand 
in the vestibule of the temole. Much less 
than one-half the surface of the State has 
been broken by the plough. Its resources 
have been imperfectly explored. It has de- 
veloped at random. Science will hereafter 
reinforce the energies of Nature, and the 


110 


Selections from the 


achievements of the past will pale into in- 
significance before the completed glory of 
the century to come. 

Atchison , A/ap 10, 1896. 










































































































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